This August the builders will start their amazing construction works. The Gaasperdammerweg – a six lane freeway cutting throug the Bijlmermeer – will be enlarged and tunneled. Roy Berents, an urban planner of the city of Amsterdam, gave a lecture on the engineering of this project in our studio in Amstel III. With its three kilometer underpass, he told the students, the road will be the biggest of its kind in the Netherlands. The Dutch state still thinks it is needed because of forecasts of growing car use in the zone between suburban Almere new town and Amsterdam airport. But this was in 2004. Now it all is questionable. And the real need for the tunnel in this urban zone was because of the opposition of rich people living in Het Gooi, east of Amsterdam. They didn’t want a new highway in their backyard, even if it was in a tunnel. So then the State decided to extend the existing road right in the midst of the poorest neighborhood of Amsterdam. With a tunnel, though. Everyone thought the poor would profit.

In the end it means less noise and better air quality. So is everybody happy? We spoke with people in Holendrecht, a poor neighborhood in the Bijlmer area. Their answer: why the hell this project? Holendrecht is already surrounded by big projects, it never stops. The works will be finished in 2022, so another seven years of uncertainty for those living in the area. And what will the planners do with the 18 hectares on top of the tunnel deck? Nobody knows. Building on it is not allowed. The road is part of an External Security Regulations Zone: dangerous traffic by trucks and rail (LPG, chemicals, NH3) already cuts through the built environment. It might become an urban park, although there is no money for landscaping and there are already two huge parks in its vicinity: Gaasperplaspark and Nelson Mandelapark. Landscape architects keep on designing though. A team of students has to find out how to involve as many stakeholders as possible. We need collective intelligence. In the meantime, the rich in het Gooi keep on enjoying their unspoiled gardens.